death, infertility, and this crumbling nation

Thanks for all the condolences. Allen was a good neighbor and we'd BS at times but we weren't really friends in that we didn't socialize together. I will miss seeing him around though but I'm sure the property will stay in the family.

Allen's sudden departure did give me a little kick in the butt. We finally made out wills for the first time ever back in 2009 but we just never got around to signing them which does no good at all so I've been all about getting them updated and this week they get signed and notarized. Dying intestate in Texas is a pain for those you leave behind. I know of two people whose spouses died without a will and the children from the previous marriage of the deceased spouse laid claim to half the property because they could rather than any legitimate claim. Of course, there are no children from previous marriages, but still, the state has no problem making claims of it's own.

So, life goes on. I wonder what the world will be like in another 20 years when my grandkids are on the verge of their 40s with children of their own, if that's even possible by then with male fertility taking a big hit. I read a very interesting article recently on the overpopulation of the planet that predicts that the human population will stop growing within the lifespan of people living today. The planet reached 7 billion people sometime last March but it took longer than it did to add the 6^th billion, the first time that has ever happened. The trend has been for shorter and shorter intervals but that has now changed and the reason for that is fewer women having children and having fewer children when they do. Some of that is from decreasing male fertility and some from urbanization. Urban dwellers typically have fewer children or none at all. Already Western Europe is losing population, more people dying than being born, and could lose 1/4 of their population by the end of the century. Russia and China stand to lose half their population by the same time.

It takes 2.1 live births per woman to maintain population equilibrium, more for the population to grow. In Germany, the birthrate is 1.36; in Spain, 1.48; in Italy, 1.4. The United States has managed to grow mainly through immigration. Immigrants tend to have more children than native born but even that is falling and with Trump restricting immigration and even deporting parts of our population, the US no longer has a birth rate that will maintain our population levels. Even high birth rate countries like Mexico and India and Brazil have fallen to barely sustainable rates and birth rates are diminishing in Africa as well.

Some experts believe the world population will top out at 9 billion sometime around 2070. If these trends continue and the world birth rate stabilizes at 1.5, then the world population will halve by 2200 and will fall to 1 billion 100 years later. This is all assuming, of course, that the current trends continue and we don't self-annihilate in a nuclear war.

Fertility issues aside, I worry about the society my grandkids will be living in. Will this country continue the decline it seems intent on, taking us back socially to the pre-civil rights era of repression for all who aren't white and male, ignoring the knowledge of science and in general discouraging education of the population, turning their backs on the poor and disabled, closing our doors to immigration? Already farmers' crops are rotting in the fields because either migrant workers aren't being allowed in or they just aren't coming because of the hateful atmosphere Trump has engendered and all those job hungry Americans aren't so eager to do farm work.

It is possible that this nation will not recover from Trump since the Republican controlled Congress seems content to let him and his white supremacist buddies turn this country into a dictatorship, trampling on our first amendment rights and attacking the free press substituting his propaganda arm, Trump TV while the NRA foments armed rebellion if Trump gets removed from office.

Our constitution is only as strong as the people who believe in it and defend it and it looks like those in power who swore to defend it and uphold it have no real intention of doing so.

another one bites the dust

My neighbor Allen died unexpectedly Sunday morning. Allen owns the mostly vacant lot between us and what was his father's house, Frank of the Bountiful Garden, that the new neighbors now occupy. He has storage buildings at the back and his family would come and smoke the deer sausage from their hunting in one of the shelters every year. He kept it well maintained and in the spring he would mow around the bluebonnets and leave them there to go to seed before he would mow them in. He liked to hunt and fish and garden, shared the fruits of his labors with us more than once, kind of an all round country boy, checked in with his aging parents nearly every day while they were alive. 

Allen was scheduled to have double bypass surgery but he put it off because they had a trip to Alaska planned and he wanted to go and he also wanted to finish helping his friend with the work that needed to be done on his farm. He had the surgery a week ago. His double bypass turned into a triple and then all four and a valve replacement but he came through the surgery fine, was up walking around joking with the staff, no one was concerned and Sunday morning he had a heart attack they couldn't revive him from. He was 68.

The church was packed. He was obviously well liked in the community and loved by his family. After the service and the graveside across the street, everyone was invited to the fellowship hall to remember him with a catered lunch, because that's just the way these people roll. Allen and his wife loved polka music and dancing so there was polka music played by a friend and musician on the accordion.  It makes me smile to imagine them dancing a polka.

I'm going to miss seeing Allen every few days moving stuff around, picking stuff up, dropping stuff off, mowing the yard. He was a good man and generous of spirit. If you needed help, he'd be there. It's taken about a week for it to finally sink in. I had seen him just days before when he came to mow the yard, probably right before he was admitted to the hospital because that's the kind of guy he was, taking care of business. Even Thursday at the funeral we were still in disbelief as I tried to visualize him in the coffin with his camo gimme hat on. 

Fly high Allen.

work in progress - heron box

I'm still in model making phase, the sculpture part. I probably enjoy this part the most as this is the real making of the piece. What comes after is just transformation from one medium to another. I've switched from feathers to another box, the heron box. This is the last box I have planned. That doesn't necessarily mean it will be the last box I do but it is the last one waiting in the wings. The last four and this one, I've been playing with precast inlays as decoration. I cast all the pieces separate and then, with a fair amount of cold work, get the recess in the side of the box and the cast element to fit easily and then I glue the inlay in. Of course the separate wax pieces fit together as wax but there's a lot that happens between wax and glass and some tweaking is always necessary. I don't use the precast inlay as an inclusion in the wax box because in the mold, the inlay will be vertical and once molten again, the glass could start to flow out before the rest of the glass fills the space.

So far I have the inlay carved and mounted on a sheet of wax in preparation for the mold making 

and the box constructed and am carving water lines on all four sides. 

The top, which I haven't started yet, will have a feather as an ornament so in some ways, I guess I'm still working on a feather piece. I have an actual blue heron feather that I found years ago when the grandboy was here on one of his weeks. We drove out to Lake Texana State Park on the Navidad River, or what was Lake Texana State Park before the state relinquished it, and I took the boy out in a canoe and there on the opposite bank of this little lake was the feather. I made him get out and fetch it for me. I haven't worked out the feet to the piece yet.

I enjoy showing my models and their progress as I work on them though I am thinking I may stop doing that because maybe seeing the models prejudices the viewer's opinion towards a piece. My cast glass has never been monochromatic and working in the pate de verre technique was the first time I ever really worked with color. The other glass art that I have done, the commissioned etched and carved glass, has all been nothing but monochromatic. The point about showing, or not as the case may be, my finished models is sometimes people mistake them for the finished glass piece. Sort of the flip side to that are the ones who suggest casting it monochromatically because they love the way it looks in wax. I haven't so far because it requires a sea change in my thinking about whatever particular piece is being discussed and because the whole pate de verre technique is about color and color placement. I don't reject the idea out of hand but I'll have to do a piece with that in mind from the beginning.

I have done a set of pieces, the bark squares, in black and white, or rather 5 black and one white in the set so far, but I've put them aside for now because I'm still not sure what I am doing with them.

summer heat and summer visits

Yesterday was the last day of July and now we head into the dog days of August, although the forecast for the first week shows lower temperatures than we had this past week, which went into triple digits, the hot south wind blowing across the field behind us like the heat that comes out of an oven. We might even get some rain. Yesterday morning at 8 AM, it was still relatively cool out, operative word here being 'relatively', and while we will be hovering in the low 90s and maybe even the high 80s this week, I saw that Portland, Oregon is predicted to hit 106˚ or higher. It hasn't even been that hot down here on the Gulf Coast plains. There is something seriously wrong when the Northwest gets hotter than we do.

In another couple of weeks, the twins will head off to their first year of college. It doesn't look like they will manage a couple of days here as there is still much to do before they leave and we have spent a week with them this summer, just not here. We did get a drop in visit from our 20 year old grandboy the other night. Drove all the way out here to spend about an hour and then drove back as he had to be at work at 8 AM the next day. Used to be I would have to chase him down to give him a hug under protest when he left after visiting, then a few years ago he started giving me one of those side hugs. The other night when I went to hug him as he was leaving he gave me an honest to god bear hug. First time ever!

Summers have gotten less busy. The only summer grandchild left is Robin. They all out grew the regular spring and winter break visits, when all four would come years ago, about the time they were old enough to stay at home by themselves but they kept up their summer visits.

And so, I picked up Robin on a Friday with the plan to return her on the following Monday not a week but hey, I'll take what I can get. We stopped at Trader Joe's and Costco on the return to lay in some supplies. At Costco I bought 2 cartons of blueberries, one carton of strawberries, one carton of raspberries. I had bought a carton of Rainier cherries at a previous stop that we had already polished off and Robin ate all the raspberries on the way home. By the time she left she had eaten all that fruit plus nearly all of a watermelon, besides just regular food. That may not sound very impressive if you've never shopped at Costco.

Anyway, she wanted to get her haircut so I made the appointment for Saturday and of course there is no 'before' picture but it was longer and no bangs

after which we poked around in a couple of shops 

until we got hungry, drove out to get the honey I thought I had arranged to buy but apparently there was a breakdown in communication, and then back for lunch and then we made a lemon tart.

She couldn't decide which movie she wanted to see so I bribed her with an extra night to see both. 

Sunday we went to El Campo to see the new Spiderman and Monday we went to see Baby Driver in Rosenberg.

I was supposed to take her back on Tuesday but she decided that since it was like being at home here only she didn't have to get her own food and there was more variety, she'd stay another night.

Wednesday though, I did return her home.

Texas Contemporary Glass at the Nave

You might remember that we were recommended for a curated museum show, Texas Contemporary Glass, and had one of our pieces reluctantly selected (our work was too small to suit him and, in his words, 'literal' where he was wanting to focus on 'conceptual') except that that piece had sold years ago. I won't bore you with the entire exchange, suffice to say that he failed to respond to my last email with images and suggestions.

Anyway...

Our friends Dick and Kathy the glassblowers stopped by to visit and pick us up on their way to Victoria to see the show on Saturday. We had a great visit and a pleasant drive down and back. The Nave Museum in Victoria is a small but lovely venue with the reception desk situated between the two galleries.

image via: https://www.traveltexas.com/attractions/nave-museum

The show is small because it's a small venue and we had seen some of the work before, been shown with some of the work before. Some names I recognized, some were new to me. Over all it was a curious and uninspiring collection of work. There were many multi-media works but some of them, the glass part was just an element like one piece that included 5 tiny vials that held the more important contents imbedded in an open dictionary with a little alcove carved into it. I don't see how that particular piece gets to be considered 'glass' art. But then there was the arch shaped thick glass slab that had an early iPhone embedded in it with activity on the screen. Most the work was all glass, most the multi-media works were mostly glass, there were also 4 or 5 pieces with neon as an element and a video which was just downright puzzling. I didn't take any pictures in that room and there are two corners of the front room that I missed but you can get a sense of the show with these, a little less than half of the work on display.

There were a few pieces I liked. I love Judy Jensen's work (on the wall on the right in the above photo), her multi-media constructions with her beautiful reverse paintings on glass.  And I really like Polly Gessell's work. She does these incredibly detailed small sand carvings and had two pieces in the show. Each glass block that makes up the totem pole is incredibly ornamented (free standing in the corner in the above photo).  And I've always liked Michael Crowder's butterflies, a pate de verre technique different from mine, that was hanging in one of the corners I didn't photograph though you can see it in this post from 3 years ago.

(you can see the book on the wall on the right and the black piece in the foreground on the right is the curator's piece.)

So while we weren't represented in the show, we did get our name on the wall that detailed the progression of the glass art movement in Texas (down near the bottom) though the placement is a little misleading since we established our studio in the mid-70s.

participating artists: Bale Creek Allen, Susan Stinsmuehlen-Amend, Jim Bowman, Shannon Brunskill, Michael Crowder, Jayne Duryea, Polly Gessell, Justin Ginsberg, David Graeve, Chad Holliday, Judy Jensen, David Keens, Jason Lawson, Christian Luginger, Peter Mangan, Neal Paustian, Wade Schmitz, Mary Shafer, Patrick Wadley, Robert Wilson, Nathalie Houghton, Charlyn Reynolds. 

what I am not doing today is being in the car

I wish I could post the fragrance as easily as I post this image, then you'd understand why it is I fuss with them, besides their plain beauty that is.

I have a rare day at home alone today. Marc's brother, wife, and child from Colorado and his sister and her family from Dallas have rented the beach house they rent every summer and Marc has driven there to visit for the day. Or part of the day as it's a two hour drive there and a two hour drive back and he will spend more time on the road probably than actually visiting and as such, I declined to go. I would like to see them and spend some time on the beach so hot but just not today. I have already spent a good part of every day in the car since last Friday when I picked up Robin from the city til I took her back yesterday. And we have plans for Saturday involving driving to Victoria with some friends to see the Texas Contemporary Glass show we are not in because the curator didn't think our work was big enough or conceptual enough and he was kinda snobby about it but he did think a lot of his own work and included himself in the show which I think is not against any rules but is a bit unethical.

The brother had called last night and Marc ended up the conversation with “text me the address and we'll come visit tomorrow”. Then he says to me, “That's all right isn't it?”

“Well, no, not really.” I was pretty much looking forward to not doing anything for the next two days.

“You'll have four hours doing nothing in the car,” he says.

“Exactly!” What I should have said was I looking forward to not being in the car for the next two days.

Anyway, this morning he absolved me of all guilt and took off for Galveston.

So, so far I put the tea cup back up and put seed in the totem and put cracked pecans on the ground and so far no sign of those who shall not be named no sense in invoking the gods, I got back in there with the long handled nippers and a saw and cut down all the rain trees that proliferate at the back corner of the property where the Wild Space starts and I was drenched when I came in with the sweat just pouring off me more around the corner that you can't see that are only 5' tall instead of 12', 

I fiddled with and finally made a decision about an art light fixture that I bought over a year ago and never hung because blah blah blah reasons settling the questions I had and deciding on a small alteration (not on the fixture but lengthening the part it hangs from so that it hangs lower) and also where I am going to install it which is where I intended to all along, 

I had lunch, and I have started back to work on the model I put aside when I went to bring Robin back for her visit, 

and picked up another big handful of green discards because if I don't eventually it will be like walking on marbles out in the Big Back Yard.

Oh, and I spent way too much time on FB and Twitter watching the train wreck that is our imploding democracy.

green pecans and squirrels

The pecan trees usually start dropping green nuts around the first of July but that didn't happen this year so I was feeling a little optimistic about this year's possible pecan harvest. Up until now anyway. This past week, and in fact just in the last few days, the trees have started unloading immature nuts. I just gathered an overflowing handful in about five minutes under one tree alone. And then there are the ones that the squirrels are taking, the half eaten ones. Maybe I shouldn't have taken the teacup down or stopped putting seed in the totem or stopped cracking a hand full of nuts from last season every morning that I tried to distract them with. But, ya know, I ran out of seed and then we were getting ready for the trip and then we were on the trip and then we were recovering from the trip and...

Those pesky squirrels, and I like squirrels, I do, I just wish they would stay the fuck off my bird feeders, OK?, are not convinced that I have taken down the teacup. They come and check periodically through the day and there's one, I think it's the same one, that will come and sit on a small branch on the tree/shrub and look at the window. We have staring contests. It'll peer this way and then that way and then up and around and then it will jump onto the screen of the adjacent window as if, I don't know what, to get a better view? And then there is one who is not confounded by the slinky on the totem bird feeder and who sits in the tallow tree just waiting for me to turn my back. I try to sic Minnie on them but she only sort of gets the program. She knows 'squirrel' and she knows about the teacup and the tree/shrub but the one that gets on the totem, she doesn't seem to get that it runs from the totem to the tallow tree which is a straight shot through the back door...back door, totem, tree.  Instead, she runs out the back door and takes a hard right and runs over to the turtle pond and goes ape shit over Big Mama sunning herself, which Big Mama tolerates for a while and then slips into the water. This is what passes for fun around here. Or exercise or rather, exercise in futility, as I admit I try to scare the begeezus out of it now and then by busting out of the back door and screaming obscenities at it. It's not fazed.

Well, I have seed now so I suppose I should start putting it out and put the teacup back up and I have a new idea to prevent that squirrel access to the totem involving metal flashing which I hope is slippery and flexible enough to prevent purchase. We'll see. So far I feel like the coyote.